Delivering expertise allowing customers to focus and succeed

The challenge

Required secure, reliable colocation to ensure always-available customer support 

Today’s business environment relies heavily on technology. Managing this environment—and integrating the latest IT innovations into it—can be time-intense, not to mention overwhelming for a business that lacks the resources or expertise to do this effectively. Atlas Professional Services takes this challenge on for its customers. 

With the performance and availability of its customers’ IT infrastructures lying in the balance, Atlas could not take chances in protecting its own environment. There was simply too much at stake. To protect the integrity of its infrastructure, Atlas wanted to partner with a colocation provider that offered a secure, redundant and reliable environment. 

“No one can be an expert in everything,” said Kristin Johnson, market development director, managed services for Atlas Professional Services, Inc. “Companies hire Atlas because we are experts in our field. We wanted to work with an expert in the colocation field.” 

The solution

Reliable colocation enables seamless delivery of IT services 

After investigating local colocation providers, Atlas chose to partner with Flexential, utilizing its Tampa - West facility. With 41 data centers in 19 regions across the country, Flexential has a reputation for excellence in delivering secure, leading-edge IT solutions backed by exceptional customer service. 

To protect its customers’ assets, Flexential offers multiple layers of security, including biometric scanners, dual-factor authentication and 24/7 guard-monitored and logged surveillance. The facility enhances the security features with redundant power, network and connectivity to ensure no single point of failure and promote world-class uptime. These features are vital for Atlas as any interruption in service impacts its ability to deliver the critical IT services its customers need. 

“Flexential has the best uptime in the business, and the response time from a service standpoint is better than anyone else,” said Johnson. “If Flexential wasn’t a worthy partner, the Atlas reputation would be on the line.” 

These combined levels of protection deliver a highly reliable environment, backed by Flexential’s industry-leading, 100% SLAs on power, cooling and network. Utilizing Flexential’s connectivity-rich data centers and 100 Gbps backbone—scalable to 400 Gbps—Atlas achieves redundant, automatically rerouted connections to keep its business connected with its customers, partners and vendors. Flexential’s highly scalable environment builds upon this reliability to allow Atlas to expand and contract its environment to satisfy changing needs quickly. 

For Atlas, the icing on the cake is Flexential’s consultative approach to customer service. As a company committed to delivering superior customer support, this focus on relationship building is a critical differentiator for Atlas. 

“Flexential is relationship-driven, proactive in their approach, and the response time is there,” said Johnson. “This makes Flexential superior to other providers.” 

The Flexential team of hardware, software, and security professionals—collectively carrying more than 500 certifications—also provides a level of confidence that its environment is in good hands. This confidence allows Atlas’ internal team to continue to focus on providing innovative IT solutions for its customers. 

The results

Over a decade of successfully supporting customers’ evolving IT Needs 

The strength of Flexential colocation alleviates a long list of security concerns for Atlas, providing an assurance that Flexential can safeguard its environment and boost its ability to support its customers. 

Flexential also bolsters Atlas’ growing business allowing it to quickly meet evolving demands—whether to accommodate corporate growth or a unique customer requirement. With key IT infrastructure components in place with Flexential, Atlas can turn up customers and scale the environment as needed. This flexibility provides tremendous value and peace of mind, allowing Atlas to quickly and securely satisfy customers’ IT needs to build strong, trusting relationships with customers from the get-go. 

“We set expectations for our customers and Flexential helps us deliver on those expectations,” said Johnson. “If we have a prospect that needs colocation services, we know we can get it done quickly with Flexential. It improves the overall customer experience.” 

Twelve years later, Atlas is still a happy Flexential customer—so happy that it has referred Flexential to its own customers, approximately 25% of whom also rely on Flexential. 

To support its growth, Atlas has expanded its footprint into the Tampa—North data center, which offers hardened construction designed to withstand a category 5 hurricane. From a quality and performance perspective, Flexential delivers the foundation that Atlas can build and grow its successes—and its customers’ successes—upon. Flexential colocation enables Atlas to do what it does best—manage its customers’ always-advancing IT needs.